Chapter Twenty-Four
She’d learned the ways of her new home, but she had yet to master them. And that was the critical difference.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
The day after Thanksgiving, Anna’s phone woke her at o-dark-early. She fumbled for it, heart clenching in her chest, and had a double-panic when she saw her sister’s cell number. She answered it in a rush. “Beth?”
“Hey, Anna-banana.”
Anna heard bells and a mass of voices in the background. She blew out a breath and draped a hand over her chest while her pulse fluttered back to normal.
“Mom and I are in Nordstrom, and we saw the cutest reindeer sweatshirt,” Beth said. “What size are you wearing these days?”
“Happy Black Friday, sweetheart,” her mom called through the phone.
The thundering in her heart slowed to a trot. “I don’t need a reindeer sweatshirt.”
“But you know how much the boys love to give you sweatshirts for Christmas!”
She didn’t have to be there to know Beth was muffling her snickers in the sleeve of whatever gaudy sweatshirt their mother had picked.
Anna sighed. “My blender broke last week. Maybe they could get me a new one instead. I could tell them I was gonna make me up some squirrel soup with it.”
The silence stretched between them, broken only by the bells and the crush of other shopping noises.
“Mom says you sound Southern,” Beth said.
“I—crap.”
“Somebody’s been spending too much time with her boyfriend,” Beth said in the singsong voice she used on her younger patients.
It would’ve been in her family’s best interest for her to deny the boyfriend part. To let them think this was a crazy post-divorce fling. To prepare them for when she and Jackson split ways.
Because it would happen.
Eventually. When he got orders.
Even though it’d hurt like tearing off a Band-Aid.
Or maybe like being run over by a herd of rabid elephants on steroids. But she’d survive. Because that was what she did. She survived.
“How’s work?” Beth asked.
Okay, she eeked by. But she did it on her own, and that was what counted. “Busy. Haven’t seen much of anyone between getting ready for finals and working some overtime. But Kaci and Lance put on a nice Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. How was the Vaughns’ annual snow-blow extravaganza?”
While Anna considered getting out of bed, Beth launched into a story about her in-laws’ traditional Thanksgiving snowmobile run, and the danger in which they put her poor fourteen-year-old baby boy by letting him ride along.
Jackson wouldn’t be here for several hours—heaven forbid she be allowed to drive two hours to his family’s house by herself—and she’d stayed up studying after getting home from Kaci and Lance’s.
For her first post-divorce holiday, it hadn’t been bad. Kaci could, in fact, cook a decent turkey, and the homemade macaroni and cheese had been unbelievable.
She’d missed her own family though.
“Maybe you want to go snowmobiling at Christmas?” Beth said.
Anna stared at her dark ceiling. She’d never gone before. Neil thought it was too dangerous.
Jackson probably would too, but he’d trust her to make up her own mind.
“Anna? You still awake?”
“Yeah. Kind of. Snowmobiling sounds fun.”
“Great. I’ll tell Tony’s parents to save a run for us girls. When are you leaving for your football game?”
“Around noon.”
“Well, get some studying done. I cannot wait to hear about this guy’s family.”
Something suspiciously similar to nerves rolled her stomach into an icy ball of fear. “I’m a little afraid of his mother,” she said. “Despite what you might think, I’m pretty sure I don’t talk Southern enough for her.”
Beth laughed. “Think of all the fun you’ll have telling me everything afterward.”
Yep. Fun. As long as she could concentrate on having fun, and not worrying whether she was wearing the wrong color shirt, or saying the wrong thing, or being too Yankee, or accidentally insulting anyone, it would be a blast.
Turned out the theory of Jackson taking Anna Grace home to meet his family and the reality of it were two different kinds of fried chicken.
The theory had thick, crunchy skin and a juicy inside, a high meat-to-bone ratio. She was a special friend and his sister liked her enough to invite her to a football game that set him on the outs with his whole family every year.
The reality was a mite bit moldy. He hadn’t been able to brush his teeth long or hard enough this morning to get the taste of dread out of his mouth.
Momma had had that look yesterday. Louisa had an entirely different one, as she’d spent three-quarters of the turkey dinner talking about Just Anna this and Just Anna that.
Every time Louisa said Anna’s name, Momma ground her teeth. She kept her smile fixed and her tone pleasant as honey, but he still heard the grating teeth.
It’d been so bad poor Radish had tucked her stub of a tail between her legs and hid in the mud room until Jackson brought her leftovers.
So when he pulled up to Anna’s apartment half an hour early Friday morning, he thought maybe hanging out here all weekend was a better plan.
When he’d take a woman over being in the stadium for the Iron Bowl, he knew he was in trouble.
Especially since he’d told Mamie he might bring Anna by for bowling after dinner.
Big trouble. Big, big trouble.
But Anna opened her door, looking sleepy and stressed out and happy to see him, and he’d never been so glad for trouble. “Anna Grace, you look like you need a break.”
She grabbed a fistful of his third favorite Bama T-shirt—the first two were packed away for the both of them tomorrow—and hauled him inside. He went right along, grinning as big as his old spaniel in a field of squirrels.
When they finally hit the road, Jackson was feeling a lot less stressed.
Anna was wearing one of his favorite smiles—the kind she used only when she looked at him.
But even when she looked away, when her brain might’ve taken her to thoughts of homework or work or her family or any number of things he hadn’t figured out yet about her, her lips tipped up like she had a secret.
It made his chest feel all cozy, as though the outside world were cold and windy and snowy, but his heart was wrapped up in one of Mamie’s old quilts in front of a fire in that place he’d rented the year he spent at Minot in North Dakota.
Wasn’t even dreading going back into that house that gave him indigestion again today, not with his spunky Anna Grace by his side.
The drive flew by with her chatting about whatever popped into her head, fiddling with the radio, nodding off and wheezing out a soft snore, and jerking back awake with that cute wide-eyed panic that she might’ve missed something.
He almost missed the turn off the backcountry highway to head into Auburn proper.
He took the long way, which could’ve meant he toured every street in Auburn before heading toward the iron arches guarding the house Momma had married into. First, he picked one specific street between the airport and the university.
They drew up to a split-level brick home halfway up the block. Jackson slowed the truck. Anna had gone quiet.
Probably thought this was it.
Should’ve been it.
“Grew up there,” he said, flicking a finger at the old place. Had a lot of fun there too. Learned how to be a man he hoped his daddy would’ve been proud of there.
Wasn’t sure he was doing everything right, but he was trying.
Her worry lines smoothed out. She gave him another of those secret smiles. “Looks like a nice place to grow up.” She leaned into him, her hair smelling all sweet and Anna-like, and pointed. “Is that the tree you tried to fly out of?”
Leave it to Anna Grace to remember the good ones. “That’s her.”
“Which branch?”
The old oak was bigger than she’d been back in the day, but the branch in question wasn’t there anymore. “See that big lump about a third of the way to the branches?”
“Aw, it’s gone?”
“It, ah, didn’t survive my growing up.” And he could still remember his daddy’s face when Jackson had to explain how the second-largest branch on the whole tree had happened to splinter off on a thick, lazy, stagnant July afternoon—irritation fighting with amusement, fear of Momma’s reaction outweighing everything else.
How you planning on telling your momma you broke her favorite tree?
Jackson couldn’t have been older than thirteen when it happened, but he could still see his daddy standing there on the driveway, rubbing his chin, eyes twinkling, choking on something.
Pollen, he’d said, but it was only one of a handful of times Jackson ever heard his daddy talk about allergies.
Must’ve been a sight, Daddy had said.
He shifted a glance back at Anna Grace.
His daddy would’ve gotten a kick out of that sight too.
“This another story not fit for my delicate Yankee ears?” she teased. But the soft brush of her fingers over his hand, the way she tilted her head so her eyes went all soft, he knew what she was really asking.
If it was his to keep, or if it was his to share.
He gestured to the tree again. “Reckon you could say I watched too much Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote as a kid.”
“Oh, dear.” Her cheeks split into his second-favorite kind of Anna Grace grin. Her eyebrows gave him a go on wiggle.
He flipped his hand up and gave her fingers a squeeze.
“Rigged my momma’s favorite old perfume bottle as a homemade bottle rocket.
Didn’t exactly misfire, but it didn’t go where it was supposed to either.
” He’d been a hell of a kid. Wonder his daddy hadn’t had a heart attack before Jackson hit his teen years.
“Didn’t help I filled the whole bottle with fuel. ”
Her eyes narrowed in that amused, suspicious way she had about her whenever he told some of his more heart-attack-inducing stories. “I don’t want to know what you used as fuel, do I?”
“I ever tell you about my momma’s family’s upstanding reputation in the moonshine industry?”
Her lips parted, her eyes still scrunchy around the edges. “Really?”